Cosmos Ottinger movie program - Unter Schnee

In Echigo, Japan, the snow is often meters high and covers the landscape and villages well into May. The inhabitants have adapted to this for centuries. Ulrike Ottinger has traveled to the mythical snow country to capture their very own forms of everyday life, festivals and religious rituals - and with her two Kabuki actors. In the roles of students Takeo and Mako, they follow in the footsteps of Bokushi Suzuki, who wrote his extraordinary book "Snow Country Symphony" in the middle of the 19th century.

A beautiful vixen leads the two protagonists astray and they experience a wondrous transformation. As husband and wife from the Edo period, they now travel through the past and repeatedly encounter the present: temple children build the sacred Mount Fuji-san out of snow, a weaver who makes the wafer-thin crepe in the freezing cold is haunted by an evil mountain demon, the rice straw pyramid is burned with New Year's poems and wish letters at the festival of the gods of the way and the popular ritual of groom throwing is held. The transformed couple's son becomes a famous actor. But the jealous emperor banishes him to the gold and silver island of Sado, whose thousand-year history of exile is the source of the saddest and most beautiful Japanese poems. From here, his longing gaze wanders over the sea.

The three elements of kabuki, poetry and the reality of the snowy land combine with Yumiko Tanaka's music to create a visually powerful and moving film.